Alan Caruba sets out, quite succinctly, a number of reasons for discontinuing any support of BP.
Until reading his article, I was unwilling to blame BP for the spill, because accidents happen and we need the oil such wells produce...but after learning about the corporation's complete disregard for safety and the environment, I've come to realize that the spill wasn't just bad luck. It was bound to happen to a BP operation sooner or later, and in fact similar lesser disasters had already happened to BP in other places because of their disregard for safety.
Caruba paints a picture of BP as being run by a cynical, money-grubbing man, who is doing his damnedest to use the fake global warming theory as a way of increasing his own profits. Certainly they don't appear to care about the lives of the men working down in the trenches, not if there's a buck to be made.
It would be funny if it weren't so tragic. The US government is falling over itself, doing stupid things which prevent the mitigation of the oil spill. And BP did a lot of stupid things which caused the problem to begin with.
And BP is a major Democrat donor. How much money did Obama get from BP?
Caruba's piece puts into perspective the fallacious "safety award" some Obama functionary got fired over. It also lends context to the waiver given to Deepwater Horizon for its operations. It was all political cronyism; if George Bush had had such obvious and traceable ties to an unmitigated oil disaster like this, the media would have been screaming about it every single day since it came to light.
Instead, there is nothing.
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Both Caruba and Big Dick linked The Oil Drum which is a forum of and by oil drilling experts. The piece "What Were the Causes That Led to the Deepwater Horizon Blowout and Explosion?" includes techno-speak which I'm unable to evaluate, as I know even less about drilling wells than Dick does, but I could make up enough of it from context to understand that it appears that BP made a lot of mistakes and could even have taken some foolish shortcuts with the Deepwater Horizon well.
I can see it: BP execs telling engineers they don't need X or Y, thinking, "Well, if it does blow up, they won't know why." The engineers do what they're told, relying on "Well, it never happened before!" And then it happens; and once the flow of oil stops people will start working on why...and BP is going to be shown to be at fault.
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I still don't think punishing the stockholders of BP is right, though.
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Part Two: Doom and Gloom
From Eternity Road, two posts, the first by Aaron and the second by the Curmudgeon Emeritus.
Aaron's post is called "The coming crises" and talks about how the crises will unfold. "All systemic political corruption comes in four phases," he says, and proceeds to lay out what they are and where we fall in the procedure.
We are, it seems, between step three and four; and four is the bad one.
Curmudgeon Emeritus (CE) concentrates on that middle time, and how bad things may get before they finally start getting better.
I am particularly worried about the social aspect. As CE correctly points out, the people who suckle at the government teat are not going to be happy when the teat dries up. There will be riots--long, bloody, and widespread--when the money stops flowing. Inner cities will be war zones; and the people in them won't stay there. They'll head outward in search of the things they need, and they'll take it from whomever they can, and won't care how their victims voted in the last election. If the victim refuses, he'll die, probably by being beaten to death or worse. Even if he assents he may still die. The rage of the lower class will not be satisfied with anything less than the blood of anyone they deem themselves inferior to.
Martial law will have to be imposed. This is the part which worries me; it would worry me regardless of who is in the White House but it especially worries me with Obama sitting there. In his past 17 months in office Obama has shown that he pays only lip service to the principles set down there; at every turn, if he has been able to get around it, he has. The BP shakedown is only the latest example.
I worry about America under martial law, but especially under Obama. If the blowup happened tomorrow, would there be elections in November? Or would "the emergency" call for their indefinite postponement? How long would "the emergency" go on?